Profile

I have 27 years of experience in the area of food safety/infectious disease control prevention. My first exposure to the field was while working as an Environmental Health Specialist in the State of Michigan. My years as an EHS helped me to understand the importance of designing and delivering high quality, theoretically sound educational interventions leading me to pursue a Ph.D. During the last two years of my Ph.D. studies, I was able to translate classroom theory into practice as a Food Safety Extension Specialist at Michigan State University. During summers I also taught in the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan allowing me to integrate my love of food science/food safety with public health practice. Before coming to Clemson University in 2008, I was a faculty member at North Carolina State University for 12 years. During my tenure at NCSU, I developed many educational interventions that were used across the State of North Carolina as well as adopted by other state Extension Services. To date, I have graduated 7 M.S. students and am currently supervising three M.S. students, two Ph.D. students, and two full-time staff members.

Research Interests

Since 2008, I have secured over $4 million in external competitive grants to develop and evaluate educational interventions designed to prevent foodborne disease and acute gastroenteritis. Education, training, and communication are recognized by FAO and WHO as critical components of a food safety system. Most of my work is conducted in institutional settings -- child care, long-term care, and schools. At present, I am a Co-PI and Core Leader for Outreach/Extension of a USDA-funded project aimed to reduce the burden of illness attributed to human noroviruses. My research team is responsible for the completion of three major projects targeting food safety professionals, consumers, and the foodservice industry. First, we are designing a series of web-based modules using Revised Bloom's Taxonomy as its underpinning to educate food safety professionals about noroviruses. Secondly, we completed a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults to determine their knowledge about noroviruses to inform development of educational interventions. We also evaluated a series of norovirus education materials available in English, French, and Spanish using a content analysis methodology to determine the accuracy and readability of the content. Lastly, in Summer 2015, in conjunction with Dr. Xiuping Jiang's research group, we completed the analysis of over 4000 environmental swabs to determine the presence of noroviruses in foodservice public bathrooms under non-outbreak conditions. We are also developing vomit/fecal matter clean-up guidelines, required by the 2013 FDA Food Code, and will begin evaluating the guidelines in 2016. In addition to my food safety/infectious disease control work, I am also working on a community-based project to assess the readiness of congregate nutrition sites to implement educational interventions as we hypothesize context directly effects implementation of information.